Sitting in the movie theater, the black IMAX giant screen occupies the entire field of vision. Without hitting the title, the story starts directly. The camera followed an infantry squad, using a panoramic lens to track the movements of all soldiers at the same time, as if making a documentary. The soldiers searched the town aimlessly. The audience also searched for soldiers, trying to find out who was the focus of the story. The screen creates a sense of calm documentary, but the rapid stopwatch dubbing hints at the arrival of crisis. The gunfire suddenly sounded, and the soldiers fell one after another. Only one soldier climbed the barricade and rushed to the beach a few hundred meters away.
In real history, the German front did not approach the beaches of Dunkirk so close. The German tank led by Guderian was still 10 miles away. However, through the dash of the soldiers several hundred meters, the director cut the distance so that the German army pushed closer to the beach in the movie, thus creating an oppressive sense of crisis. In the second half of the movie, a merchant ship stranded on the beach was shot and punched through many bullet holes. Similarly, the director has tampered with history here, so that the German infantry can directly threaten the lives of allied soldiers. These changes remind us that the feeling of the opening documentary is just an illusion.
In addition to compressing the historical space, the director set many key plots in confined spaces, such as the cabin of a torpedo attack and the cockpit of an airplane that was forced to land. The confined space creates a situation where there is nowhere to escape, leaving the lives of the characters hanging by a thread. It is easy for the audience to empathize when sitting in a closed theater. Even in a relatively open environment, the director uses the lens to create a limited space. In a scene where a warship sinks, the lens is fixed to the deck, so it also falls with the hull. From the viewer's perspective, the sea is not rising and submerging, but gradually expanding from the left side of the screen to the right side of the screen. The surviving space is getting smaller and smaller, until the seawater takes over the entire screen.
Probably because I felt that compressing the picture space was not enough, the director made some tricks on the extra-picture space. In the whole movie, the Germans never show their faces. But the director used the hints of gunshots, torpedo tracks, and bullet holes to make the German army everywhere. In the scenes of the airstrikes on the beach, the director first pointed the camera at the British soldiers. From the observation of a soldier, to the spread of panic among several soldiers, to the collective instinct to shrink back, the director skillfully schedules the scenes and portrays the crowd's response to the air strike. Therefore, even if the plane hasn't appeared yet, the audience can imagine the plane rushing in the space outside the painting. With the "faceless" German army, the director transformed people's instinctive fear of the unknown into the terrifying energy of the movie itself.
The director's later editing also hides the drama. Take the first air battle as an example, the director used at least five sets of camera positions:
Objective: Take panoramic shots from a distance and describe the overall situation.
Objectivity: Shoot forward and backward from the side of the fuselage, describing the situation faced by a single aircraft.
Subjective: Front sight, subjective perspective, creating a sense of offense.
Subjective: Rear-view mirror, subjective perspective, creating a sense of danger of being pursued.
A close-up of the pilot's face.
The director tells the story by editing five sets of shots. Although the pilot did not take off his mask throughout the scene, the director completely portrayed the ambivalence of the British pilots through the front and back switching of the last three sets of shots: on the one hand, they were eager to eliminate their opponents, on the other hand, they were worried about being shot down. danger. It's just that I'm sorry for Uncle Tom, and he has become a masked prop throughout the whole journey.
Of course, the director's intentions were not hidden deeply. The ever-present rapid background sound of the movie has already told the audience that this is not an objective and cold documentary. The symbolic meaning of the hand that was gradually stationary under the light beam when the French soldier drowned was extremely straightforward. After all, this is Dunkirk from the director's perspective. The disaster atmosphere that the movie tried hard to render is, after all, to set off the rescue boats flying the British flag. But regardless of the plot and position, the film technique used by the director is already worthy of attention.
View more about Dunkirk reviews
